EU under mounting pressure to ban arms sales to Saudi Arabia

'European Union lawmakers have overwhelmingly voted in favor of a resolution that calls on the bloc to slap an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia, which is leading a brutal military campaign against Yemen.

The non-binding resolution, which was adopted in a nearly unanimous 539-13 vote on Thursday, condemned attacks against Yemeni civilians as “war crimes,” and slammed EU members for authorizing weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in breach of EU laws on arms export control.

The parliament “condemns in the strongest terms the ongoing violence in Yemen and all attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure, which constitute war crimes,” the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) said in their statement.

Referring to a similar resolution from February last year, the lawmakers called on EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini to launch an initiative to impose an EU arms embargo against the Riyadh regime “given the serious allegations of breaches of international humanitarian law by Saudi Arabia in Yemen.”

The UK, France, Germany and Greece are known to have struck major arms deals with Saudi Arabia in the course of the war, which began in 2015.'